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Black people are not only six times more likely
to be stopped and searched for drugs by the
police, but more likely to be charged – and
receive a harsher sentence – if drugs are
found, according to a powerful new report
from Release and LSE (see news, page 4).
As well as analysing the government’s own figures,
the authors of
The numbers in black and white: ethnic
disparities in the policing and prosecution of drug
offences in England and Wales
sent freedom of
information requests to police forces across the
country, and carried out a particularly detailed
analysis of the Metropolitan Police Service, which
carries out half of all stop and searches for drugs.
‘Discussion of stop and search is usually about
knife and gun crime, but that’s actually a tiny
proportion – 0.8 per cent last year in London for
guns and just about ten per cent for offensive
weapons,’ Release executive director and co-author
of the report, Niamh Eastwood, tells
DDN
.
‘Overwhelmingly stop and search is about drugs,
and it’s about low-level possession offences. That
was also identified in Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of
Constabulary (HMIC) in their last report, so it’s not
just us saying it.’
Was she surprised by the report’s findings – the
actual extent of the differences in the figures for
black and white people? ‘There were some things
that we anecdotally already knew,’ she says. ‘In
terms of the actual stop and search rates, because
of the sheer number of times that the young people
in London we speak to are repeatedly stopped and
searched, we weren’t that surprised. What we were
surprised by was the differential treatment that black
people faced in relation to charging for drug
possession offences. That was really shocking,
because obviously you’re talking about like-for-like
and the police making a decision to treat people in a
significantly different way.’
What may also come as a surprise, despite some
media commentators arguing that drug possession
is essentially de facto legalised, is that 2010 saw
more prosecutions for possession than ever before.
One reason was the reclassification of cannabis to
class B the previous year, she believes, while
another was ‘the targets that had been set under the
previous government and now lifted – but that
performance indicator, target-driven culture is still
embedded within police behaviour’.
The notion that the police find it easy to go after
the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of low-level possession
offences is backed up by the experiences of another
of the report’s authors, Daniel Bear, who spent time
with one London force. ‘He’d go out in a patrol car
at the start of a shift and the police officer would say
“right, we need to go down to the park and pick up
some kids who’ve got cannabis so we can get our
sanction detections”,’ she says. ‘Then for the rest of
the night they could actually focus on policing that
the community cares about. They used it as a tool to
meet the targets. I don’t know whether the police
actually want to do that, but it’s a very easy way to
justify your performance to your senior officers.’
The cumulative effect is an erosion of trust and
confidence in the police and an undermining of the
criminal justice system itself, the report argues. ‘We
would like to see the decriminalisation of drug
possession,’ she states. ‘If you look at other
jurisdictions that have had similar experiences with
drugs policing and the aim to contain and control
certain groups – for instance the black and Hispanic
population in New York – you’ve seen senior
politicians saying that policy needs to change.
They’ve recognised that the police can’t
overwhelmingly change their behaviour, and we
would argue that that’s the same here. Despite
controversy after controversy, the police have just
not adjusted their practices to reduce the levels of
racial disparity.’
The Home Office is conducting its own review of
stop and search at the moment. Is she hopeful that
the document will have an impact? ‘We are,
especially coming on the heels of the HMIC report,’
she says. ‘The Metropolitan Police have put forward
some proposals, including 50 per cent reductions in
stop and searches overall and in negative stop and
searches, but we’re really concerned that, one, that
doesn’t address racial disparity and, two, it could
lead to the police actually going out to target those
they know will be in possession of drugs in order to
avoid the negative stop and searches. So they’ll
continue to police the usual suspects, if you like.
And also that we could have a situation where police
officers aren’t properly recording stop and searches
where no drugs have been found. We don’t believe
that the approach taken by the Met will have any
significant impact on police behaviour.’
Even a reduction of 50 per cent would be from a
peak of 280,000 people stopped for drugs to
140,000, she points out. ‘And that’s if they reach
their target. It would just bring us back to 2006
figures. It doesn’t go far enough.’
Report at www.release.org.uk
Police stop and search policy is exacerbating racial inequality in the criminal justice
system, says a new report from Release and LSE
News focus |
Analysis
EQUAL IN THE
EYES OF THE LAW?
6 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| September 2013
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
‘Overwhelmingly
stop and search is
about drugs, and it’s
about low-level
possession offences.’
NIAMH EASTWOOD, RELEASE